as a perfect godsend, and was overjoyed with the feeling of security infused by my opportune discovery.  However, fatigued and weak, I accelerated my return to the camp, and communicated my success to my companions.  Their faces brightened up at the intelligence, and all were impatient to be at them.

The general, on learning my intelligence, desired us to move forward to the river with what horses we had left, and each man to carry on his back a pack of the goods that remained after loading the cattle.  He farther desired us to roll up snow to provide him with a shelter, and to return the next day to see if he survived.  The men, in their eagerness to get to the river (which is now called Green River), loaded themselves so heavily that three or four were left with nothing but their rifles to carry.

We all feasted ourselves to our hearts’ content upon the delicious, coarse-grained flesh of the buffalo, of which there was an unlimited supply.  There were, besides, plenty of wild geese and teal ducks on the river—­the latter, however, I very seldom ventured to kill.  One day several of us were out hunting buffalo, the general, who, by the way, was a very good shot, being among the number.  The snow had blown from the level prairie, and the wind had drifted it in deep masses over the margins of the small hills, through which the buffalo had made trails just wide enough to admit one at a time.  These snow-trails had become quite deep—­like all snow-trails in the spring of the year—­thus affording us a fine opportunity for lurking in one trail, and shooting a buffalo in another.  The general had wounded a bull, which, smarting with pain, made a furious plunge at his assailant, burying him in the snow with a thrust from his savage-looking head and horns.  I, seeing the danger in which he was placed, sent a ball into the beast just behind the shoulder, instantly dropping him dead.  The general was rescued from almost certain death, having received only a few scratches in the adventure.

After remaining in camp four or five days, the general resolved upon dividing our party into detachments of four or five men each, and sending them upon different routes, in order the better to accomplish the object of our perilous journey, which was the collecting of all the beaver-skins possible while the fur was yet valuable.  Accordingly we constructed several boats of buffalo-hides for the purpose of descending the river and proceeding along any of its tributaries that might lie in our way.

One of our boats being finished and launched, the general sprang into it to test its capacity.  The boat was made fast by a slender string, which snapping with a sudden jerk, the boat was drawn into the current and drifted away, general and all, in the direction of the opposite shore.

        It will be necessary, before I proceed further, to give the
        reader a description, in as concise a manner as possible,
        of this “Green River Suck.”